Bohemond

This raises an interesting question. Could the Hydra eat the Bat in real life (well, Gloranthan standard real life)? The Bat is technically a god, where the Hydra isn't. But the Hydra is a pre-Time chaotic monstrosity. So who wins that battle? Years ago (RQ 3-era), my brother and I were spitballing ways to destroy the Bat. I came up with a Eurmali with a 350 point Swallow spell swallowing it whole. I still love that idea (even if the idea of a Eurmali with a 350 point Swallow spell is pretty terrifying...)

Why would anybody want to lure a monstrosity like that out?

Anything it wants to. Yeah, the idea of its children turning up occurred to me. I guess I was wondering if people had done anything more with the Hydra. After the old Dragon Pass board game, it seems to have entirely fallen out of Glornathan lore before suddenly showing up in the Clan Generator.

There's also whatever bits of Wakboth still exist under the Block and bubble up in the Devil's Swamp. I seem to recall that in an issue of RuneQuest Adventures Wakboth's hollowed out skeleton exists as a series of tunnels at the Block. Obviously non-canonical, but it's not a bad idea. Also, in Snakepipe Hollow there are the Devil's Right and Left Hands, which are rumored to be Wakboth's hands. Those are at least semi-canonical, although whether they are actually part of Wakboth is probably unproven.

The Sartarite Clan Generator has a question about the clan's ancient Chaos Foe. Most of the options are a group of things (Broos, Ogres, Scorpion Men, False Friends, Dragons. Even the Thing With Many Bodies is a group.) But there is also The Hydra, which seems to be a single specific thing. The only Hydra I've heard about is the Hydra of Hydra Hill in Dragon Pass, which is chaotic but doesn't seem to move around very much and which seems to be of army-level power and a single powerful thing, like Cacodemon or Cwim or so on). As a clan enemy it seems both extremely powerful (if it can fight an army, it can probably destroy a clan) and easy to avoid--just move away from where it lives. And yet it's continued to trouble the clan that has it as an enemy. So as a recurrent Chaos Foe, it doesn't seem to work well. It's too big to easily fight, and yet this thing has to pose at least a periodic problem. The GM can't just decide that the Hydra is going to show up in the campaign this session because it's sort of like the Crimson Bat or Cwim just showing up one day--it's an existential threat. How have people used this in their games?

It sounds as if Great Ungaron is the demon in question. It let them pass "for her sake", which suggests to me that her Mirror in some way enabled her to convert the demon from foe to friend. That very much sounds like Harmony magic, such as Reassure Stranger. In some way, the Mirror showed Ungaron that it and Chalana Arroy were the same, wanted the same thing, or suffered in the same way. Perhaps Ungaron is a manifestation of the world's pain, and by showing it that she felt that pain, she showed it that they were friends.

David, many thanks! I had missed the section in P:GTA. That is basically what I needed. When my Uroxi skulked around the 7 Mothers Temple in Swenstown, I told he 'felt itchy', which seemed like reasonable temporizing as I figured things out. And it works well enough.

David, speaking of your Prax book, any word on when that might see publication? Asking for a friend...

Uroxi can sense chaos, and have magic against chaos. So how does this apply to Lunar deities? Most Lunars are not, obviously, tainted by chaos. The major Lunar cult strictures heavily discourage using chaotic magic. But that connection to chaos is still there. The Lunar cults are sort of chaos-adjacent--they have the ability to convert a rune into chaos, after all. So what does an Uroxi sense around Lunar holy places and artifacts? Do they feel chaotic? One reason I'm asking is my players are in a situation where they're trying to steal a relic of Yara Aranis from a Lunar temple. I need to figure out what my Uroxi player senses and how applicable his Eternal Battle rune might be toward the cults he's encountering.

Those seem like perfectly good ideas to me. Those items have always struck me as something that was put in more for flavor than for meaning, and I don't think anything canonical has been done with them since Apple Lane was published, so your guess is as good as anyone else's. You have an interesting dichotomy of Light Earth (the statue) and Dark Earth (the rod) there. Perhaps you could build a scenario when an Ernaldan is being called by both the Light and the Dark side of the Earth, and the choice she makes about which item to bring back determines which direction her soul takes.

Yeah, I agree with Soltkass. If you really want something to come back from the quest, bring it back, even if it involves bending the rules. It's clear that entities can come back, and some entities need bodies, so it's not unreasonable that a strange animal could come back. Perhaps it's giant on the Other Side but merely large on this side. Or maybe it comes through as a spirit but wakes/resurrects/summons a relative/descendant in this world. If it makes for a better story to have an animal come back, have the animal come back.

I'm actually not interested in the rules. I'm wondering what sorts of things people have come for that situation.

My Ernaldan PC decided last night that she wanted to become a devotee of Orane. It was a bit spur of the moment, so I hadn't prepared anything. The rules say that the PC has to overcome a Plot Obstacle. So I ruled that she had to decorate herself as Orane and then go out and gather the components of her Necklace of Enlivenment from members of the community. If I'd have had a bit more lead-in I could have developed it into a more elaborate scene, but it worked well enough. I'm wondering what sort of Plot Obstacles people have come up with for devotees of various cults? Just curiosity, mostly, but also looking for ideas for when other PCs devote to gods.

That's...not where I had expected Genertela to wind up.

This makes Rinliddi avilry make more sense.

Obsidian is associated with Lodril, isn't it? He built the Tower of Black Glass on the Shadow Plateau for Argan Argar. It's also probably associated with other volcanic deities, like Vestkarthen and Caladra and Aurelion. So it might be useful for fire magics.

I'd argue that Robert Graves' White Goddess played a role too--the whole Triple Goddess thing.

Although there are various degrees of marriage, I don't think a marriage contract could include a provision for one side or the other being unfaithful. Instead, there are rules about the duration of the marriage--a day, a year, or indefinite duration. But there are definitely ritual exemptions of various kinds.

I'm wondering about how Ernalda's Law operates. I don't think much has been written about it (unless I've missed something, which is certainly possible). Babeester Gor exists to enforce this law and avenge its violations, and from her cult write-up in Sartar Companion we know that kin-slaying, violating oaths sworn to Ernalda, and harming temples and priestesses of the Earth are violations of the law, and it seems that violence against women is also in many cases against this law. It also seems that matters related to marriage are under her law--adultery is a violation of her law in most cases. It seems that Ernalda's law demands violent vengeance for kinslaying. The relatives of Babeester Gor's victims cannot demand compensation for her killings. That suggests that it's a more primal law than Orlanth's law, which offers compensation as an alternative for vengeance. It also seems that Ernalda's law focuses primarily on blood relationships over affinal relationships like marriage--your relatives are the people descended from your mother and grandmother much more than the family you marry into. Do we know anything more about this? Is there an Ernaldan equivalent to the Orlanthi lawspeaker, or are priestesses effectively the Ernaldan lawspeakers? Can an Ernaldan priestess issue a ruling about whether the killing of a woman was justified? Would such a ruling bind a Babeester Gori to not avenge the victim?

Take a look at this gloriously crazy 19th century Japanese textbook on American history. There is something profoundly Gloranthan about it. George Washington and his patron goddess America! Benjamin Franklin carrying a cannon! John Adams fighting not one but two evil giant snakes! Adams making a deal with a mountain spirit in order to gain the aid of a giant eagle! Here's the full Twitter thread

Well, there is already a Light Earth deity for men with a woman's soul--Nandan. Presumably Nandani tend to the Earth/Harmony/Life combo that Ernalda has and thus are less likely to be warriors and more likely to pursue 'Another Way' solutions like Ernalda does. I like the idea of Barntar as the male parallel to Vinga (men with Earth souls) but there seems to be a sense that he's a Storm tribe member, not an Earth tribe member, and that his magic is Air not Earth.

If the defeat was substantial, I would suggest a Lingering Penalty to his ability to frenzy or something comparable--he's been 'tamed' and needs to recover the wild side of himself.

I finally had time to sit down and sketch out the rough outlines for a Minotauros hero quest. Minotauros "When he grew, he became strong and wild, so wild his mother could not control him. So he left her. At first, he went wherever he wanted and did whatever he wished. He trampled down buildings and knocked over fences. The he met the Stranger. The Stranger sought to kill Minotauros, but Minotauros was too powerful. He defeated the Stranger and continued his roaming. When Barntar heard about a young bull that roamed freely, he wanted Minotauros for his plow-team. So he confronted Minotauros and wrestled with him to tame him. They wrestled for a day and a night, knocking down trees and kicking over hills. Everything fled them. But finally, Minotauros exhausted Barntar and shook his head so violently that Barntar flew across a nearby mountain and never bothered him again. Then he saw Uralda, the Great Cow, who was lovelier than all other cows. She invited him to couple with her, and so they did. Then she said, “Follow me, my bull, and I will give you a good home.” But he saw that following her was just another way to be tamed, and he refused. The bulls he sired on her have always been rowdy and untamable. Finally, he met his father, the Storm Bull. His father looked at him and laughed. That enraged Minotauros, who charged his father. But the Storm Bull was stronger than Minotauros. Not matter how hard he tried, he could not defeat his father. Finally he lay on the ground, exhausted. The Storm Bull roared with laughter, shaking ground for miles around. “This is my son!” he bellowed. “He is fearsome and not to be tamed! He will do as he pleases!” And Minotauros realized that his father was not laughing at him, but laughing out of pride. His father picked him up and embraced him. “Go now, my son, and do what you wish. No one will ever be able to make you do anything.” The key idea here is that Minotauros needs to demonstrate that he is his father's son, so that the quest is about proving that the quester is a true son of Urox. The quest is short, having only four normal stations, but they can come in any order, and failure in any of the first three knocks the quester out of the myth (since he stays where he is and never meets Urox). That explains why Uroxi with living horns aren't common. The Stranger can be almost any enemy except Chaos. Sometimes Barntar wagers something to Minotauros in a contest where losing results in joining Barntar's plow team. Unlike the first two stations, Uralda cannot be defeated with strength or combat. As a result, this is the station where most Uroxi are defeated. The Urox station doesn't involve actually defeating Urox. Rather it involves enduring until the quester has impressed Urox. The quest is most commonly performed to gain magical bull's horns. These automatically grant a bonus to social interactions with other Uroxi and minotaurs. But it can also be done to force someone to acknowledge paternity or another relationship or to forcibly 'adopt yourself' into someone's family or to enter in an alliance with minotaurs. Any thoughts/suggestions?

I really like the idea of Baroshi as a cult for men with the Earth Rune, making him something like the Earth version of Vinga. Whereas Nandan is for men called to Ernalda, Baroshi is for men called to the Dark Earth. Perhaps if he's one of the Three Stars, more boys start being born with Earth rune souls.

I first discovered Glorantha around 1980, when I was about 12 or 13. I loved it and gave up D&D entirely on the spot. For me, Glorantha is hands down the best fantasy world ever created and no matter what other games I play, I always come back to it. I never met you, Mr Stafford, but you brought real light into my life. I have no doubt that at some future date, when gaming has true need of your creativity, someone will perform the Lightbringers’ Quest to return you to us.